"...Largely driven by the pending influx of hundreds of US and international F-35s, the USAF is exploring breakthrough technologies for enabling “live-virtual-constructive” (LVC) training on a grand scale.

LVC represents a new form of air combat training. It blends three elements: live assets in the form of real flying aircraft, virtual systems composed of aircraft and aircrew simulators, and constructive elements created with computer programmes.

Ideally, an LVC scenario would make air combat training more realistic by blending hundreds of platforms, weapons and sensors into a shared synthetic environment, which would otherwise be too expensive and complicated to assemble on a training range with only live assets. Imagine a training scenario with a multinational formation of F-35s, command and control aircraft and tankers flying mission rehearsals together. Arrayed against them are an assortment of accurately portrayed ground and aerial weapons systems with the full spectrum of kinetic and electronic attack options....

...LVC capabilities today are growing, but they are insufficient to meet future demand. Within a decade, Lockheed expects to have delivered more than 1,000 F-35s globally, including hundreds to the USAF alone. The introduction of a fifth-generation fighter in such vast numbers will pose a challenge to an already strained air combat training system. By combining supersonic speed, radar stealth and advanced onboard sensors, F-35s may find it difficult to train effectively against older aircraft types....

...Lockheed is now under contract with the USAF to integrate domed simulators developed for the F-35 into the DMON, Scott says. The schedule to complete that integration is still under discussion within the USAF. When that occurs, however, it will be only the first step to allowing the F-35 to participate in LVC. In addition to simulator integration, the F-35 also requires the USAF to develop a new waveform that can handle the data, latency and classification level required for LVC.

Like all previous USAF fighters since the mid-1970s, the F-35 comes equipped with a system that transmits the aircraft’s positional data during air combat training events. In previous fighters, the distinctive Cubic P5 combat training system (CTS) pod is mounted on a wing station during exercises. The podded solution does the job for fourth generation fighters, but a wing-mounted store on the F-35 would betray the aircraft’s stealth signature. So Cubic developed the P5 internal subsystem for the F-35.

Another complication posed by the F-35 is the classification level of the information transmitted by the P5 pod. In fourth generation fighters, such information is not considered sensitive and is transmitted openly without encryption. The US military has chosen to apply classification levels to F-35 positional data, which required Cubic to encrypt the signal transmitted by the P5 internal subsystem.

There are also limitations with the P5 waveform itself. Northrop’s Guy notes that the P5 has a high-capacity downlink, but an extremely limited uplink. In an LVC environment, Northrop’s LEXIOS needs to transmit volumes of positional and sensor data up to each live aircraft in order to keep everyone on the same page. Right now, the system relies on Link-16 to transmit the required information, but neither Link-16 nor the P5 is able to handle the volume of data from airborne sensors, let alone the capacity required as F-35s enter training ranges in large numbers. Moreover, neither Link-16 nor the P5 can handle multi-level security access.

So the USAF is in the early stages of developing a new waveform dedicated to LVC, says Tim Welde, a senior business development manager for Cubic....

...The cost of developing a new waveform and associated software and hardware is only the beginning. New pods must be procured and then installed and qualified on the fourth-generation fighter fleet. The P5 internal subsystem for the F-35 must be replaced with a new LVC subsystem, Welde adds. The LVC capability also requires reprogramming the fighter’s operational flight programme....

...Such technology will not be available for at least seven or eight years in any case, but industry officials are developing ways to make more use of existing LVC systems. For example, Northrop is working on a way to allow LEXIOS to handle data with multiple levels of classification. That could help integrate F-22s and F-35s more into LVC training, as well as bringing in international participants.

Cubic, meanwhile, is developing a new technology for specialised Red Air aircraft. Several private companies, such as Dynamic Aviation and ATAC, provide fleets of third-generation fighters, such as Douglas A-4s and Northrop F-5s, for air combat training with the USAF and Navy. Due to the age of these aircraft, many are not equipped with radars and other sensors. They do, however, carry P5 CTS pods, Welde says.

These pods carry the positional data of the Blue Air forces involved in the same training scenario. So Cubic is working to transmit the data from the pod to a kneeboard-mounted tablet, giving the Red Air pilot situational awareness as if the aircraft had a radar or other sensors, Welde says. The so-called Bandit Board could also be used by the Red Air pilot to command the P5 pod to emulate a radar signal, giving the Blue Air forces another training option."

Live Training Alone Will No Longer Cut it for F-35, B-21 Pilots30 Nov 2016 Yasmin Tadjdeh

"ORLANDO, Fla. — Live exercises by themselves will no longer be a sufficient method to train Air Force personnel flying F-35s and the upcoming B-21 bomber, a senior service official said Nov. 29.

“Live exercises have been the standard by which we train like we fight,” said Gen. Ellen M. Pawlikowski, commander of Air Force Materiel Command. “However, the resources required for living training are costly and in today’s complex environment, don’t offer the required density or fidelity to accurately depict modern combat.”

Live, virtual and constructive training — which combines simulation, live training and computer models to create a comprehensive virtual environment, will be the new standard, she predicted.

The high cost of live training poses a serious readiness issue, particularly as adversaries rapidly develop technologies to counter U.S. capabilities, she said during a video message broadcasted at the National Training and Simulation Association’s annual Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference.

Because of test range limitations, the cost of sophisticated munitions and limited weapon system availability, the Air Force must turn to LVC to provide airmen with a rich training experience, Pawlikowski said.

LVC will “increase realism and robustness in the integrated joint training environment,” she added. It can be used to train in all operational domains, including air, land, sea, space and cyber.

Maj. Gen. Robert D. McMurry Jr., commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, said LVC training would eventually be baked into all weapon platforms. It “is going to be just incredible in terms of how we develop, how we procure, how we test, how we deploy, how we train and how we sustain systems,” he said.

The goal is to put airmen in the most realistic operational environments possible, he said. In the past that was the Red Flag exercise held at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. With LVC technology, training could be even more robust, he added.

LVC will in the coming years be used to train F-35A joint strike fighter pilots. “The goal is to bring it to the F-35 in the ‘20s,” McMurry said. “That’s going to be essential to its success.”

Lynda Rutledge, program executive officer for Air Force agile combat support and LVC training, said the F-35 is the “primary driver for LVC” because its training requirements differ significantly from legacy platforms.

The training infrastructure that the Air Force currently has does not meet the needs of the F-35, said Maj. Gen. Thomas Deale, director of operations for Headquarters Air Combat Command.

“When we’re training at that fifth-generation level, we’re talking airspaces the size of … Utah and Nevada just to get to the amount of capability needed to train at that level,” he said. LVC is one way to create such an expansive amount of space virtually, he said.

Such technology will also be useful in training for anti-access/area denial environments, he added....

...“We have huge opportunities to learn lessons” from aircraft such as the F-35 as they adopt LVC technology, he said. “It gives us here an opportunity to have LVC built into the platform and the simulators and the entire construct as we build it because of course we haven’t yet produced a system.”

Rutledge said the Air Force is just getting started in investing in LVC technology.

“Although LVC has been in discussion over the past several years, there’s really not been a formal program of record established to create a cross-domain, cross-enterprise approach to take full advantage of a lot of technologies that we really have at our doorstep right now,” she said.

LVC will eventually touch every part of the service “and then on frankly to joint and NATO partners,” she said."

"...the United States Air Force (USAF) with the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and the USAF and US Marine Corps (USMC) with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) - that currently operate fifth-generation platforms, pilot training has largely followed the traditional path that has been used over decades for older generation aircraft. With more and more fifth-generation aircraft now entering service across the world, however, operators will increasingly have to marry up ongoing requirements to train for its older generation platforms with those for its newest ones....

...[a senior USAF official noted] "The difference between fourth and fifth generation is basically in the way that you employ an aircraft that is stealthy; in the way that you use sensor fusion; the [super cruise] speed of the aircraft; employing avoidance versus engagement; the concept of autonomous operations; the use of signature management and network integration; and how to integrate with a fourth-generation aircraft that is on your side. There are a lot of challenges from a pilot perspective, like the time compression you experience in the F-22 due to the high speeds, and the fact that even your friends cannot see you....

As the USAF official explained, "Fifth-generation aircraft have challenges for training, with the geography of ranges not being large enough to accommodate their advanced sensors. Also, the new sensors that we will have you may not want to turn on during training for mission security.

"Third- and fourth-generation aircraft require large numbers of adversary aircraft for them to sense and to react to - that's very expensive and hard to generate. The USAF uses a ratio of 4:1 for Red Air to Blue Air for training sorties, which means either using the very expensive frontline platforms [at which time all of our frontline pilots are pretending to be 'bad guys' and so not really learning what we want them to learn], or we look more closely at the synthetic environment.

"In the past, the highest end training that we could offer our pilots was at Red Flag, but even that range is limited in size. There is no range in the world that is big enough to do fifth-generation training as you'd really like to do it - this forces you back into the synthetic environment, which now requires very high fidelity and expensive simulators. That's the only way that you can do it, though....

...Despite the expected increase in reliance on synthetic training, the official conceded that the provision of real-world flight training will remain critical to turning out fully formed fighter pilots. "What you use the live training (the most expensive part, and the part that burns through airframe hours) for is the dynamic part such as manoeuvring. All the things that a simulator cannot do well - replicating spatial disorientation, pilot stress and fatigue, etc - you still have to do in an airplane," he said....

...This was a viewpoint that was backed up by an Israeli Air Force official speaking at the same event under the Chatham House Rule, who said that, while simulation will become an ever important training tool for the Israeli Air Force as it stands up its F-35A 'Adir' force, the service will remain heavily focused on real-world training for those events that cannot be replicated synthetically. "I don't think that we will be able to say that we will do 90% synthetic in the future and 10% real, because you'll still have to expose the pilot to the full spectrum of the mental, physical, and cognitive load that they will only experience in the air. We could maybe go to 75% to 35% [in favour of simulation] in the future, but certainly not more than that."...

...While current fourth-generation aircraft carry an external pod, the airborne sub-system for the F-35 is internalised and integral to the aircraft, so as to maintain the platform's stealth characteristics (all F-35 customers except Israel, which has its own system, will use this). Cubic is currently under contract to deliver 500 boxes through low-rate initial production (LRIP) 11 for the F-35, of which more than 150 had been delivered by mid-2016. The box goes live in the F-35's Block 3F software block (full combat capability) due in the third quarter of 2017, and Cubic is currently undergoing testing with the system. The US Department of Defense (DoD) has also contracted the company to deliver encryption to the ground sub-system for classified briefings.

Following Block 3F, there will be further upgrades of the P5 system, Cain said. "Initially, [the DoD] will be using it really just as a 'live monitor' to assess training in real time. For the future it will be looking to encrypt the fourth-generation pods and open up the datalink to share data and information back and forth across [the different generation platforms]."Beyond these enhancements, Cain noted that a new way of teaching fifth-generation pilots will be needed, as the current methods are not sustainable due to their costs, and that Cubic is already forging ahead with this in developing its LVC technologies.

"One thing that everyone is agreed on today is that we can't just keep sending up more and more capable 'Blue Air' against an ever increasing number of adversary aircraft - it's just cost prohibitive. Also, you can't tax the fifth-generation aircraft's sensor suites and weapons in a cost effective or realistic manner.

"We want to go to the LVC, which is the next evolution from P5. Today, if I have four 'Blue Air' F-15s, it takes roughly about 12 other aircraft to generate a problem for them. The F-35 is so much more advanced that you now need sometimes as many as 20 more airplanes and a bunch of surface threats - those things cost a lot of money. Also, you sometimes don't want to use your full capabilities on a training range, you want to internalise them based on a virtual constructive system of networked simulators that can be your virtual wingmen."

In August 2016 the USAF conducted its first integration of fourth- and fifth-generation fighter aircraft during an LVC event. As part of the Distant Frontier training exercise at the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex, Northrop Grumman integrated two virtual F-22 Raptor fifth-generation fighters to fly and train alongside four live fourth-generation F-16 Fighting Falcons operating out of Eielson Air Force Base (AFB). The synthetic F-22s were operated by members of the 90th Fighter Squadron from simulators at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska...."

ORLANDO, Fla. — With live training alone unable to provide the complex scenarios meant to push the F-35 to its limits, the US Air Force is banking on a suite of cutting-edge technologies that will fuse virtual and constructive elements into live exercises.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is about halfway through the technology demonstration phase of the [b]Secure Live, Virtual and Constructive Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) program, which will secure the technologies needed to give pilots as close of an experience as they can get to an actual battle.

The program is set to begin demonstrating the system aboard F-15E Eagles and Navy F/A-18s in 2018, but the technology probably won’t be ready for the F-35 and other fifth-generation aircraft until the mid 2020s, said Maj. Gen. Robert McMurry, AFRL commander.

“We’ve learned over the past that our training systems are not up to the task that we have,” he said during a Nov. 29 keynote speech at the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education (I/ITSEC) conference in Orlando. “The cost of bringing live training environments and exercise environments to the level of fidelity that we really need to simulate what we would expect to be a conflict environment is probably cost prohibitive.”

Live, virtual and constructive (LVC) training has become a buzzword in the simulation industry over the past couple years, but SLATE is not about merely developing the capability for LVC assets to train together, said Dave “Moses” Noah, SLATE program manager at AFRL. A true LVC environment uses virtual and constructive elements to make live training as realistic as possible, enabling highly complex and advanced scenarios.

When the Air Force conducts live training today, there are elements of make believe that keep the pilot from having a truly immersive experience. For instance, an F-15E flying against an F-16 functioning as an aggressor aircraft will still see an F-16 on its radar shooting American weapons, he told Defense News.

But once SLATE is integrated into the fleet, that F-15E will be able to see the F-16 as a MiG-29, or any other adversary aircraft, on all of its sensors and displays. The idea is to more accurately replicate the conditions of battle, including simulating various environments, adversary weapons and other systems not in the US inventory.

"When we take off, go around the area and point at each other, I have the radar cross section signature of a MiG-29, I have all of the radar emissions of a MiG-29, so when I lock him up, he doesn't see on his radar warning receiver a symbol for an F-16. He sees a MiG-29,” Noah said.

"The first time that he knows that I'm not a MIG-29 is finally, at let's say 2.1 miles, gets a visual on me,” he said. "Up until then, he doesn't know."

Once SLATE is integrated, an F-15E in the training simulation will see the F-16 as a MiG-29, or other adversary aircraft, on all of its sensors and displays.

AFRL is overseeing the development of three key technologies for the program: a radio waveform that can manage the unprecedented throughput of data between the different LVC assets, high-level data encryption that keeps sensitive information like radar signatures from proliferating, and a multi-level security system that allows different data to be passed to US and international assets depending on the level of classification.

The waveform, called the Fifth Generation Advanced Training Waveform (5GATW) has been fully developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory and performed final flight tests in September, Noah said. During the tests, Lincoln Labs stressed the waveform by passing as much data as possible between ground stations and two aircraft, an L-29 and Dassault Falcon 20 owned by the labs.

Cubic is responsible for the rest of the system, including creating the encryption and security architecture as well as manufacturing a software-defined radio about the size of a smartphone capable of managing and processing the 5GATW, said Mike Knowles, vice president of air ranges. It’s also making the ground support system that will provide connectivity between the LVC elements.

Over the upcoming months, the company will integrate those technologies — along with an antenna, power amplifier and a processor — together into a pod that will be attached to fourth-generation aircraft.

“Inside our labs as systems integrator in San Diego, we’re already putting together the software-defined radio, the waveform we integrated, the multi-level secure architecture and the ground station,” he said. “So in our lab now, we’re at the point where we can do simulated connectivity of the system, so we can test out and verify the communications. The encryption system is already under the NSA [National Security Administration] process for certification.”

During I/ITSEC, the company showcased some of the systems that will be encapsulated into the pod, which will be about the size of an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. For fifth-gen jets like the F-35 and F-22, more engineering will be required to internally install the capability, preserving its low observability. That’s not a part of SLATE's technology demonstration phase and will be done later on when the service starts an acquisition program, but Cubic has proposed some ideas to AFRL on how the core systems could be integrated into the joint strike fighter (JSF).

“For JSF, it’s not going to be that hard. [For] a lot of the SLATE components, the hardware is designed to be able to be able to port into JSF in the future,” said Tim Cockerham, a senior principal systems engineer for Cubic. For instance, some of the technologies used for SLATE could replace older processors or other subsystems that are larger in size.

The Air Force has committed $49 million for the technology development phase, and the Navy plans to add about $20 million of its own funds.

AFRL and Cubic are going to continue testing and developing SLATE over the next year. Three two-week demonstrations at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, which will include Navy participation, are planned in 2018, Noah said.

The first demo, planned for March, involves a couple F-15Es and F/A-18s interfacing with some virtual and constructive players​. “We’re just making sure we have connectivity out on the range at Nellis,” he said.

Another demonstration in May increases the number of actors and the influx of data being exchanged. The capstone event in October will take it up yet another notch: up to 16 live aircraft acting as blue forces, additional live aggressor forces, and then “a classified number” of virtual and constructive forces.

“But it’s going to be a lot because we want to show how much the system can handle,” he said.

Future AcquisitionOnce technology development ends, it will be up to the service to spin SLATE into a competitive program of record. That’s not exactly an easy thing to do in this fiscal environment for a capability that will cost billions, and possibly tens of billions, Noah said. However, the service’s Life Cycle Management Center, the acquisition arm of Air Force Materiel Command, has designated employees to help ensure a smooth transition.

“They come to work in our building just to be joined at the hip with what AFRL is doing with SLATE,” he said.

AFRL is already engaged in regular meetings with Air Combat Command — which has been designated the lead command for LVC platforms — and with Lynda Rutledge, the program executive officer for the agile combat support directorate, who is in charge of acquiring simulators.

The acquisition strategy has not been finalized, but “this is going to be multiple programs of record because LVC is so huge,” he said.

"ORLANDO, Fla. — The U.S. Air Force will rely on a blend of live, virtual and constructive techniques to prepare its airmen to fight future battles in multiple domains at once and across disciplines, service leaders said March 3. The need to prepare for fusion warfare — where a battle is fought against near-peer state actors as well as non-state actors and incorporates members of all the services on land, at sea, in the air, in space and in cyberspace — dominated conversations at the Air Force Association’s annual Air Warfare Symposium.

Systems and platforms that employ a combination of live, virtual and constructive, or LVC, technology play “perfectly” into that situation, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein told reporters. “I’m never going to send a single platform into combat, I’m always going to send a family of systems that connect together, and that family is not only going to be Air Force,” he said.“LVC plays perfectly into that because it’s all about the network.”

The service’s Air Education and Training Command will use LVC to “create environments that we can’t replicate in reality,” said its commander, Lt. Gen. Darryl Roberson. “When you’re trying to integrate space and air and cyber in the real world, you’re limited on what you can do,” he said.

The constructive simulation component is particularly helpful for analysis, said Acting Air Force Secretary Lisa Disbrow. “Analysis drives [concept of operations], it can drive investments, it can uptake our force,” she said.

LVC technology could be beneficial as the Air Force looks to conduct more experiments ahead of procurement processes, Goldfein noted....

...“We want to get to 60 F-35s [joint strike fighters] as soon as possible,” she [Disbrow] said. The service’s fiscal year 2017 base budget includes funding for 43 F-35 aircraft, she said, adding that refreshing the fleet of F-15 Eagle tactical fighters, F-16 Falcon fighters and the legacy bombers is also in the mix...."

"Cubic Global Defense completed the second round of tests for its internal P5 aboard the F-35 this month, pushing the US military closer to its first encrypted combat training system, Cubic’s senior business development manager says this week.

In previous training missions, the F-35 has used a low-fidelity, unencrypted identify friend or foe system. Like its podded configuration, the internal P5 provides real-time information, records mission data and provides post-training mission debriefs. The internal P5 will update information faster than an identify friend or foe system, allowing more accurate tracking, and will encrypt messages, including position and real-time kill notifications.

The internal P5 subsystem will become operational with Block 3F, which Lockheed is on track to deliver by the end of this year, Waylan Cain tells FlightGlobal at the Dubai air show. Although Lockheed has not rolled out the full 3F software, Cubic has already started delivering the internal P5 to the F-35 fleet.

Even in a training mission, Cubic’s podded configuration would ruin the F-35’s stealth signature. The internal subsystem not only preserves the Joint Strike Fighter’s low-observable characteristics but also becomes the only encrypted training system that will be fielded on a US military aircraft. With the exception of the F-35, the rest of the Pentagon’s inventory does not have a training system that encrypts messages...."

"NAVAL AIR STATION FALLON, Nev. — The future of naval aviation is complex: aircraft are growing more technologically advanced, pilots face a proliferation of high-end and low-end threats, military budgets are squeezed and demand for U.S. Navy forces around the globe is growing. So how will naval aviation training keep up? In part, with increasingly sophisticated simulators.

The Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center at NAS Fallon is undergoing a massive modernization effort to improve air warfare training, and much of the modernization revolves around the use of Live, Virtual and Constructive (LVC) training opportunities. Naval aviation and NAWDC leadership invited USNI News to tour the facilities for a day to see how technology is allowing the Navy to make its training more cost-efficient, more networked, more high-end and more beneficial to the students.... [then lots of stuff about CAVE & JTAC training but there is more....]

...Reed, the JCAS branch head, said NAWDC is still trying to get the authority to connect CAVE to the Navy’s continuous training environment (NCTE), and that while that decision has been delayed, he hoped to have it within the next 12 to 16 months. A decision to link CAVE to the rest of the trainers would help create NAWDC’s ultimate vision for this JTAC trainer: “what we will eventually be able to do is put this into a guy in a F-18 simulator or an F-35 simulator at (NAS) Oceana or Lemoore, and they’ll be running this simulator, talking to the guys in this simulator, and doing all their controls to get their currency requirements to satisfy their training” while taking their targeting cues from JTAC students in their own simulator in Fallon, Gusewelle said.

Integrated Simulator TrainingA next step towards achieving that vision of connecting multiple simulators spread across the country is the Integrated Training Facility being constructed at NAS Fallon. This will house, all under one roof, simulators for “pretty much anything in the carrier strike group,” Capt. Leif Steinbaugh, director of training systems at NAWDC, told USNI News.

“We’ll be able to integrate them all together. Eventually we will be able to pipe in feeds from live aircraft out on our range – that’s the live part, the L in LVC – and then vice versa hopefully we can pipe what’s being seen in the simulators, or what’s being constructed in the simulators, out to the live aircraft as well. And then hopefully sometime in the future we’ll get that building connected to other LVC facilities, not only in the Navy, in naval aviation, but also with our joint partners,” he continued, noting that Nellis Air Force Base, about a six-hour drive to the south, would be the first targeted facility for cross-location LVC training.

In addition to the Integrated Training Facility, set to wrap up construction by the end of 2019 and open for operations within three to four years, NAWDC is also building an Air Wing Training Facility, set to finish construction in May. This building will allow the same air wing training that takes now, but at a more appropriate security level and in a way that allows for much more data collection...." [more about other stuff at the jump]

The four page extract attached about VIRTUAL TRAINING from AirForce Magazine Special Edition 2018 AWS is now below:

THRIVING AND SURVIVING THROUGH TRAINING Amy McCullough [and getting past the B/S at the AFM website]USAF’S TRAINING COMMUNITY VIEWS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND VIRTUAL REALITY AS KEYS TO AN AFFORDABLE, LETHAL FORCE.

"A new, high-security operations center at the Atlantic Test Ranges (ATR) at Naval Air Station (NAS) Patuxent River, Maryland, is set to pave the way for further expansion of the Navy’s flight testing and live, virtual and constructive (LVC) training capabilities....

...Among the new programs expected to conduct flight tests from the operations center are the MQ-25A Stingray unmanned carrier aircraft, the CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopter, the Next Generation Jammer on the EA-18G Growler, and the conformal fuel tank upgrades for the F/A-18 Super Hornet....

...“The people in PES have access to a great deal of data that is not available to a pilot in the aircraft,” Vargo said. “Weprovide the tools to allow test engineers to use that data to monitor critical parameters and respond to unexpectedanomalies. This can increase flight test efficiency and reduce the need for follow-on flights based on post-flight discovery.”

Each mission test cell will hold around 35 engineers. Two of the cells are separated by a partition that can be drawn back to make one large room that will support major exercises and fleet experiments—a new capability at ATR, Eversole said.

One test cell will be dedicated to the MQ-25A, the next generation unmanned carrier aircraft. “As the integrated testteam begins work on the future of Naval Aviation, we will support them here at ATR,” Eversole said. “We can providespecific shielding against electromagnetic interference and put their aircraft control team close at hand during testing.”

"Creating synthetic enemies is now essential to training on fifth-generation fighter aircraft

Northrop Grumman is relishing the opportunities arising from complex training requirements associated with advanced combat aircraft such as the Lockheed Martin F-35, and believes that the use of live, virtual and constructive (LVC) technologies will increase markedly as their operation becomes more widespread.

With limited range space constraining the military’s ability to fully test the capabilities offered by advanced and widely networked fighters, augmenting live assets through the use of simulators and virtual entities is a growing trend....

...“A lot of people think that LVC is a future technology for the next generation of aircrew, but we are delivering capability right now,” Horler [NG air business development manager for the UK and Europe] says. “I believe there will be a growing emphasis on synthetic training and that live/synthetic blend.” This will become even more relevant, he says, since using future networked cyber and space capabilities in live training could give away key information or tactics to potential foes."